Because this is Pakistan!
Why? Because this is Pakistan!
Patriotism is the spirit which sustains our passion to serve our nation with the knowledge that its land is our home, its people are a family, and thus are we honour bound as its dwellers to guard its honour and to leave no stone unturned in the cause of its prosperity. Sadly however, the fact is that when immorality and corruption takes root in a society as a social norm, such concepts are eclipsed by a general despondency towards such ideas as too idealistic to be practical or too childish and sentimental to be considered seriously. As a result, even when somebody is brave enough to recall their duty towards their nation and feel their patriotism stirring within them, they are told that they should abandon their churlish beliefs and think beyond their fairyland to realise that social disintegration, moral decadence, and political instability are just ways of our country and as such should not be tampered with, otherwise we ourselves would get burned. Eventually, our patriotism fades into a disinterested apathy and we lose faith in ourselves and in the virtue of our nation.
So it is within our own beloved Pakistan. Notwithstanding those who dare to publicly proclaim their pain and unease over the societal regression of our country, if you listen closely to what you hear in our general discussions, you would come to know how dismissively we react to somebody violating traffic rules, someone who does not wish to comply with the queueing policies, or indeed even to the news of those who murdered another person then got away with it. More or less every time, with a different phrasing, you would hear the same comment again and again that “it happens because this is Pakistan.” Consequently, there are those amongst us who are willing to abandon their own country and settle abroad, and be done with their problems as a Pakistani. Then there are those who do not wish to leave their homeland but neither do they have a desire to actively contribute to its betterment, keeping in view the unprofitable outcome or the impracticality of such a venture. And finally, some of us work indeed to bring about changes for the better but only achieve a cultural mutilation of our own values, for they, like many others have also lost faith in ourselves as a nation and in effect in Pakistan to be anything in its own right. How is it that in the name of maturity and grown up thinking we deem it necessary to abandon ourselves? Why is it that only by forsaking most vital part of our identities can we be compatible to our own society and to the world at large? Is it really so? Or have we just forgotten that each and every Pakistani owns this beloved land as their own and is responsible for its ruin or its well-being? Pakistan is not merely a piece of a bordered land but a will which can only be sustained by our belief in its existence, a will which every Pakistani carries within him/her, to be expressed as an honest and hard-working student, a most upright and trustworthy employee, and above all as a standard-bearer of our cultural uniqueness and our values as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
So let’s turn the tables over! Let us own our responsibilities as Pakistanis! Let us become the beauty and the nobility of its white and green flag! Let us shine forth as the life of its crescent moon and the brilliance of its ever radiant star! And why? “Because This Is Pakistan”!
By Talha Masood
Assistant Communication Officer, HDF